On Saturday and Sunday, the performance presents how a giant arch is built.
This Saturday (September 20) at 6 p.m., and on Sunday (September 21), at 12 noon, the Auditorio de Tenerife is staging the open-air performance Maña. The Manolo Alcántara company’s proposal, featuring the process of creating a giant arch, will take place outside with free access until the total capacity is reached.
This circus-style installation performance was awarded as the most innovative show at the 2022 TAC Valladolid and received the Susana Herreras Award for best show at the 2022 Arca Festival – Aguilar de Campoo for being ‘surprising, innovative and hypnotic as an installation, which is a minority genre within the street arts’, according to the jury.
According to Manolo Alcántara, who performs in the piece with Joan Trilla, Maña represents ‘the transmission of knowledge from grandparent to grandchild through my gaze, bringing on a transformation from artisan to artist. It shows the construction of a giant arch made of hefty boxes, using the premise of economy of effort and of movement and ancestral technologies that are still relevant today: the lever, the pulley and the wheel, …’.
The choreography of this everyday element of set design is the performance in itself, in which craftsmanship plays an indispensable role, eschewing intelligent materials and tools to avoid limiting the effectiveness of the performers as artisans, and negotiating between knowledge and intuition. ‘My father taught me how to build arches, and Maña is the way I would teach my son how to build them, ‘ he concludes.
Manolo Alcántara is a self-taught artist who considers himself more of an artisan than an artist. ‘I create shows entirely with intuition, ego and curiosity, accepting the risk of the circus, and I transform it to share it with the public’. Concealing the technique to put it to use in the show is a hallmark of his work, combined with a patient and unhurried approach, and attention to detail in visual aspects through the use of innovative structures.